Black Swan Read Online Free
Author: Chris Knopf
fuzzy shoreline the gas dock emerged, with what I thought was an unwelcoming posture. When I got there, the thought was reinforced by a big grey-haired guy with a swollen, pocked-marked face who stood above us on the dock with hands on hips and frown fixed in place.
    "Can't tie up here," he said. "Closed for the season."
    "I need to use a pay phone," I said. "I'm moored out there with a busted helm."
    "Not allowed to moor there neither."
    "Where can I tie up?"
    "Nowhere. The island's closed for the season."
    I'd always known this about Fishers Island. At the easternmost reach of Long Island's North Fork, it's a place that doesn't want you there. Three-quarters private, gated club populated by the oldest money in the country, the other quarter a mix of merely wealthy summer people and
24 BLACK SWAN
year-round locals who fully shared in the island's rabid xenophobia.
    "I know that's not true," I said. "The ferry still comes out every day."
    The guy just stood there on the dock, an ugly, coveralled Horatio. Eddie waved his long mainsail of a tail and barked, the bark that meant, "Pardon me, folks, but I really got to go."
    I stepped back into the dinghy and motored over to a small beach a hundred feet from the docks and drove up onto the gravelly sand. Eddie leaped out of the boat and ran over to a tuft of dune grass into which he disappeared, ever discreet. While he took care of business, the pockmarked guy strode across the beach and approached me.
    "No dogs on the beach," he said.
    Eddie exploded back out of the dune grass and ran up, his tail wagging, eager to make a new friend.
    "Where's the closest pay phone?" I asked.
    "Connecticut."
    "I get the feeling you don't want us here," I said.
    "You got that right."
    "Tough," I said, pulling the dinghy up further on to the beach. I flipped open the cowling over the motor and with my back blocking the guy's view, used my Swiss Army knife to unscrew a part that would prevent it from starting. Eddie tried for a few moments to engage the guy's attention, but then gave up and started searching the beach for rotting sea life, one of his favorite things. I slung a rubbery sack, called a dry bag, over my shoulder and whistled for Eddie, who followed me off the beach and out to the street, which I used to reach a cluster of buildings that stood above the docks. One was a gas station, the only one on the island, that backed up to the fuel dock, another the Harbor Yacht Clubâa squat near-shack where members stored bathing suits, heard race briefings and took showers in big open air stalls; and a third structure, a place called the Black Swan.
Chris Knopf 25
    It was a neo-classic structure built a long time ago to be what it still was todayâa small hotel geared to the transitory vacationer, a rare species in the hostile Fishers habitat. It was clapboard-covered, with oversized gables decorated with deep moldings covered in successive layers of partially scraped white paint. There was a battered, 90'sera Mercedes station wagon parked out front in the hotel's gravel parking lot.
    The last time I'd sailed to the island, a few years before, the hotel had a bar and restaurant and a pay phone in the lobby. The sign next to the sidewalk that led through a low hedge and up to the door said "Closed"âbut there was a nicely formed female rear end sticking out from between a pair of large yews that decorated the front of the building, so I had a way to ask how closed.
    I cleared my throat, hoping not to startle her, which I did anyway.
    "Sorry," I said. "Didn't mean to startle you."
    She looked somewhere in her twenties, with long, wavy black hair and a
    "Can't tie up here," he said. "Closed for the season."
    "I need to use a pay phone," I said. "I'm moored out there with a busted helm."
    "Not allowed to moor there neither."
    "Where can I tie up?"
    "Nowhere. The island's closed for the season."
    I'd always known this about Fishers Island. At the easternmost reach of Long Island's North Fork, it's a place that doesn't want you there. Three-quarters private, gated club populated by the oldest money in the country, the other quarter a mix of merely wealthy summer people and
24 BLACK SWAN
year-round locals who fully shared in the island's rabid xenophobia.
    "I know that's not true," I said. "The ferry still comes out every day."
    The guy just stood there on the dock, an ugly, coveralled Horatio. Eddie waved his long mainsail of a tail and barked, the bark that meant, "Pardon me, folks, but I really got to go."
    I stepped back into the dinghy and motored over to a small beach a hundred feet from the docks and drove up onto the gravelly sand. Eddie leaped out of the boat and ran over to a tuft of dune grass into which he disappeared, ever discreet. While he took care of business, the pockmarked guy strode across the beach and approached me.
    "No dogs on the beach," he said.
    Eddie exploded back out of the dune grass and ran up, his tail wagging, eager to make a new friend.
    "Where's the closest pay phone?" I asked.
    "Connecticut."
    "I get the feeling you don't want us here," I said.
    "You got that right."
    "Tough," I said, pulling the dinghy up further on to the beach. I flipped open the cowling over the motor and with my back blocking the guy's view, used my Swiss Army knife to unscrew a part that would prevent it from starting. Eddie tried for a few moments to engage the guy's attention, but then gave up and started searching the beach for rotting sea life, one of his favorite things. I slung a rubbery sack, called a dry bag, over my shoulder and whistled for Eddie, who followed me off the beach and out to the street, which I used to reach a cluster of buildings that stood above the docks. One was a gas station, the only one on the island, that backed up to the fuel dock, another the Harbor Yacht Clubâa squat near-shack where members stored bathing suits, heard race briefings and took showers in big open air stalls; and a third structure, a place called the Black Swan.
Chris Knopf 25
    It was a neo-classic structure built a long time ago to be what it still was todayâa small hotel geared to the transitory vacationer, a rare species in the hostile Fishers habitat. It was clapboard-covered, with oversized gables decorated with deep moldings covered in successive layers of partially scraped white paint. There was a battered, 90'sera Mercedes station wagon parked out front in the hotel's gravel parking lot.
    The last time I'd sailed to the island, a few years before, the hotel had a bar and restaurant and a pay phone in the lobby. The sign next to the sidewalk that led through a low hedge and up to the door said "Closed"âbut there was a nicely formed female rear end sticking out from between a pair of large yews that decorated the front of the building, so I had a way to ask how closed.
    I cleared my throat, hoping not to startle her, which I did anyway.
    "Sorry," I said. "Didn't mean to startle you."
    She looked somewhere in her twenties, with long, wavy black hair and a
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